


Taking steps is easy, standing still is hard

by wanderingstoryteller



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 5 things the Doctor does in any worrying situation, COVID-19, F/F, Gen, Staying sane in a crisis, real world events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingstoryteller/pseuds/wanderingstoryteller
Summary: When Yaz, Graham, and Ryan try to step out of the TARDIS one morning to catch up on their daily lives in Sheffield, they find that the door won't open. The doctor tells them that the TARDIS has detected a virus and is refusing to let them out.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 11
Kudos: 65





	Taking steps is easy, standing still is hard

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve just watched 5 things the Doctor does in any worrying situation. It made me smile but it was also very comforting. Sometimes you need your favorite fictional character to tell you, “Remember you’ll get through this.”
> 
> I’ve written Doctor Who fanfiction before that’s been based around current events, such as my story, The Bells of Notre Dame. I wasn’t, however, sure if it would be appropriate to write anything that involved the COVID-19 epidemic. Seeing the recent Doctor Who video changed my mind about that.
> 
> While fiction, and especially fanfiction, is a place for escape, it’s also a space we can use to help understand and process our fears. Right now my city is essentially shut down and I’m sitting at home feeling scared and powerless. Writing about the Doctor and her companions facing that same situation helped me feel a little bit less alone and more able to face the weeks and months to come. 

"Right, I'm off to finally have a proper sit-down," announced Graham as he stepped into the console room of the TARDIS. Ever since the Doctor had flattened his favorite chair, he'd forbidden her from landing in his flat. 

“You do that granddad, I’m going to catch up with my mates.” Ryan had a basketball under his arm. He had found that if he brought decent sports equipment his mates minded him suddenly popping up after random absences a bit less. “What about you Yaz?” 

“What’s it look like?” asked Yaz, who was wearing her uniform, unfortunate black and white checkered hat and all. The Doctor might or might not have had certain ambitions towards swiping that hat for herself but so far she’d resisted.

"Going to work?" asked Graham.

Yaz shot him an exasperated look. "There is a limit to how many times I can claim MI5 needs me for a top-secret mission. My boss said in no uncertain terms that I need to show up for at least one shift this week or I’d find myself looking for work with other agencies.

“And we got you here right on time, didn’t we?” chirped the Doctor before returning her attention to the TARDIS console, “Who’s my brilliant Time and Relative Dimension conveyance? Who’s my wonderful girl?”

Yaz had to fight not to roll her eyes. She’d never get used to how the Doctor talked to the TARDIS, sometimes like an owner praising a pet, sometimes like an old friend, and sometimes almost like a lover. 

"I'm just happy to have made it in time to watch my soaps for once," said Graham reaching for the door. He slid back the latch and pushed the door. Nothing happened. He repeated the action and it remained firmly shut.

“Hey Doc, mind unlocking this?”

“Shouldn’t be locked,” said the Doctor as she fished her sonic from her coat and buzzed it towards the door. 

Graham tried again, nothing happened. 

The Doctor scrunched her nose in annoyance and looked up at the central crystal of the console, “What are you up to? Did we park in front of a wall again?”

The central column glowed and there were several whirring and beeping sounds. The Doctor tilted her head listening. “Oh dear, that does start now doesn't it?”

She stood for a moment longer, just looking at the column and then when she turned her face had a forced smile. "Hey, Fam, change of plans. How would you like to go see the Great Purple Whale Migration of Oculoso?"

“Doc,” said Graham “What’s going on?”

“The TARDIS says she can’t let you out here right now, so...whales?” The pep in her voice couldn’t have rung more falsely if she’d tried.

“No whales,” said Yaz firmly. “What’s happened? Why won’t the TARDIS let us out?”

The Doctor’s fake smile cracked and fell into a very familiar deathly serious expression, her lips drawn thin. “The TARDIS says she can’t protect you if she does, so she won’t let you out.”

"What do you mean to protect us?" asked Ryan. 

"Normally the TARDIS partially shields my companions from viruses and bacteria when we go to other places and times, the same as she gives us air and lets us understand unfamiliar languages. She can't, however, do that for companions when they are in their own native time and place, some Time Lord algorithm I've never been able to un-program."

Yaz had had enough. She crossed the room to the Doctor. “Doctor, what is going on in Sheffield?”

The Doctor’s lean shoulders slumped and she rested a hand on the console. “Have you heard of COVID-19, it’s a form of the Coronavirus.”

“It was spreading in China when we left, I saw it on the BBC nightly newscast,” said Graham. “Now that I think of it, I think there might have been a few cases in the UK, but it sounded like it was being handled.”

“It spreads a lot farther,” said the Doctor. “It’s a worldwide pandemic.” 

“So it’s in Sheffield then,” said Ryan. He set down the basketball before he could drop it and it. It rolled away.

“Yes,” said the Doctor.

Yaz’s eyes narrowed. “Then you have to make the TARDIS let us out. I’m a police officer, I’m needed!”

“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor. 

Yaz didn’t slam her hands against the console but she placed them with purpose on either side of the Doctor. They were of nearly equal height and this put them nose to nose.

“I’m not kidding. Tell her to let me out! I need to go check on my family and then I need to get to the police station.” 

The Doctor looked away. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop saying that!” Yaz was burning with anger but she couldn’t direct it at the Doctor, it just wasn’t in her. 

“I don’t know what else to say. I can’t get the TARDIS to let you out.” The Doctor looked back at Yaz with heartbreakingly green eyes that had seen as many defeats as victories. 

“Can’t or won’t?”

"Can't." 

The lie came to the Doctor so easily that she kept any sign of it from her face. She could have forced the TARDIS to let Yaz out if she truly wanted to, if she’d rewired half the console to do a manual override but she wasn’t going to do that. She'd lost so many people she'd loved over the years and she did not intend to lose any more if she didn’t have to.

What was happening on earth, the whole epidemic, was a fixed point in time. As a Time Lord she could sense fixed points on a deep instinctive level. Why that feeling always manifested as an ache in her ectospellen, she’d never know, but she knew to trust it. She’d tried to fight inevitability so many times and it had never worked.

Yaz, Graham and Ryan were different though, their futures were unwritten. They had come unmoored in time from the first moment they had stepped on the TARDIS. It was within the Doctor’s power to protect them, even if she had to lie to do it.

“I believe you,” said Yaz. She slumped against the Doctor as if her strings had been cut.

The Doctor pulled her into her arms and Yaz hid her face in her coat. She didn’t cry but her voice was strained. “Does...does my family come through alright?”

“I don’t know Yaz.” She purposely avoided learning about the futures of her companions' families when she could, it made it easier not to slip up and accidentally give anyone spoilers.

Graham was suddenly struck with a moment of brilliance. “Doc, our phones still work right?”

“Yes, of course,” said the Doctor. “We can’t go out but we can still communicate.”

“Then Yaz, call your folks.”

And that was what Yaz did, sitting on the metal steps that led up to the TARDIS door. Ryan leaned against the wall and called his mates, going through the contacts in his phone one by one. Graham went out into the hall and made a few calls to friends and neighbors, mostly mutual friends he’d had with Grace.

When they were all done they came back to the control room and compared notes. Yaz's grandmother was safe in her retirement home but the family had only been able to talk to her on the phone since the retirement home stopped allowing visitors a week before. Yaz’s parents and sister were all holed up in their apartment and doing well, even if from the sound of it they were all slowly driving each other crazy. 

Yaz lied and told them she'd ended up self quarantined in a spare room at the police station after being exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case. Her mother stayed calm, her dad fretted and her little sister cried on the phone. When she called the police station, she told a similar story but said she was home with her family. 

Ryan's mates were all fine, and mostly stuck at home playing video games. The only ones still leaving the house were one who worked as a nurse and another who had a job in a pharmacy.

It was Graham who came back into the console room looking at if a stone had been laid upon his shoulders.

“Graham?” asked the Doctor from where she was leaning against the console. 

“Mrs. Maisey’s got it.”

“The nice old lady next door?” asked Ryan.

“I just talked to her daughter on the phone. Ms. Maisey’s in the hospital, she’s not doing well.”

That hung heavy in the air. Graham was intensely tired. "Son, even if we could leave the TARDIS we'd still have to self-quarantine at home. I brought Ms. Maisey her mail about a week ago and you helped her get her grocery trolley up the stairs."

"You haven't got it," said the Doctor suddenly from where she still stood by the console. "The TARDIS would tell me if you did."

“That’s something at least,” said Graham rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He went to lean against the wall beside Ryan, briefly pressing the young man’s shoulder to reassure him. One thing he had learned in his brief tenure as a grandfather was that comforting Ryan always made him feel better as well.

They all stayed like that for a long time, still as statues in the warm golden light of the TARDIS. No one was sure what to say or do next.

It was a growl from Ryan’s stomach that brought them all back to themselves. 

The Doctor snapped her fingers. "Lunch, we should eat lunch. Why don't we go back to that restaurant at the end of the universe? You said you like that place."

“No,” said Yaz.

“Somewhere else?” asked the Doctor.

“No, we stay here. I know we can’t go out but I just...I can’t leave them, my family and everyone else until this is over.”

“Yeah, I get that,” said Ryan. 

“Me too,” said Graham, who looked towards the Doctor. 

"We'll stay then," agreed the Doctor, her face as grave as the rest of them.

Graham’s stomach growled then. “We still need to eat. Doc, have you been able to fix the gravity issues in the kitchen? It’s impossible to make tea when the kettle floats.”

“Got it sorted this morning.”

“I’ll make some sandwiches then, best we keep our strength up.”

“I’ll help,” offered Ryan, glad to have something to do as he followed his grandfather out of the room. 

Yaz and the Doctor were left looking at each other. Yaz was still sitting on the steps. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. 

That was too much for the Doctor. She went to Yaz and sat down beside her, pulling her into a hug. Yaz leaned into her.

"I know you are scared," said the Doctor. 

"I don't get it," said Yaz. "We've faced many things but this is getting to me. I wasn't scared when we fought a giant spider with my mum, even if she was in as much danger as us. We've saved the whole world before and I could have lost everyone I loved, but I still wasn’t scared, not like I’m scared now.

“Those times you had something to do, that made it easier. It’s the times when the smartest thing you can do is wait, those are the hard ones.”

“I feel so powerless.” 

“You’re not,” said the Doctor,“you're doing exactly what you need to be doing right now, even if it’s hard.”

“Does it ever get any easier?”

"I don't know," she admitted. "I've never been much good at sitting still, even when I've needed to be."

“This isn’t something we can run to or away from.” 

“I know.” The Doctor pulled her closer. 

"You're okay with staying here? When I talked to my mom, she said the news was saying this could go on for months."

“If it’s what you and the others need, then I will.”

“Even if it means learning to sit still?”

"It will be a great adventure." The Doctor smiled and when she did it deepened the faint crows' feet at the edges of her eyes. Yaz wondered about those sometimes. The Doctor said she'd regenerated from her last self, and yet she had lines upon her face as if she’d had it long enough to earn them through years of grief and joy. Were they from her last regeneration? How did that even work? 

She realized suddenly that she was staring at the Timelord. The Doctor grinned back at her. “So what do humans do when they are stuck inside?”

"Binge Netflix mostly."

“Binge?”

“It means sitting on the couch and watching a lot of episodes in a row.”

“Ooh, that sounds...human.”

As if on cue, Ryan poked his head into the console room. He was carrying a large plate stacked very high with sandwiches. Presumably, they were for sharing, although knowing Ryan the pile of food might also be what the young man considered a barely sufficient lunch. 

“Grandad and I are going to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon. He’s never seen the films, can you believe that.” 

"Oye, I'll have you know I read the books when they came out," chided Graham. “I liked the hobbits,very sensible folks them, what with their second breakfasts and elevensies.” 

“So want to join us?” asked Ryan.

The Doctor nodded. “Sure.” She stood and offered a hand to Yaz. “So fancy visiting Middle Earth?”

Yaz took her hand, "I'd love to." 


End file.
